Do you find the Portal useful? We’re asking you to please take a minute today to keep our work going.
This year we added 1.2 million pages of material to the Portal and we need your investment to continue growing.
We’re only $100,000 away from meeting our year-end goals for the Challenge Grant we received from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
During our spring appeal, the average donor gave $30, but if even half the people who use the Portal this month give $5,
we’d meet our entire goal to raise matching funds for the endowment immediately.
The Portal connects people to the past, and your support will ensure its future.

When I first began to "hang around" the Texas State Historical Associationsome thirty years ago, H. Bailey Carroll was at its helm. Dr. Carroll was given tofrequently reminding us would-be professional historians in his Texas historyseminars of the important role "amateurs" had played in the Association and inrecording the history of the state. On more than one occasion, he went out ofhis way to point out a high-quality publication by a lay historian. I specificallyremember when I first talked to him about doing a master's thesis on HillCounty, he offered to introduce me to Roger Conger at the upcoming Associa-tion meeting, with the observation that Mr. Conger was an amateur who knew alot about sources for local history in that Central Texas area. Dr. Carroll did,and Mr. Conger had some ideas he freely shared with me. I know others he hashelped as well.It is good to have his writings gathered together. They demonstrate why hehas deserved the many awards he has received, including the presidency of thisAssociation. Dr. Carroll would be proud. Roger Conger is an amateur histo-rian, the quality of whose work we can all admire.Stephen F. Austzn State University JAMES V. REESEWilliam D. Wittliff and the Enczno Press: A Bzbliography. By Gould Whaley, Jr.(Dallas: Still Point Press, 1989. Pp. xvi+ 143. Preface, acknowledgments,introduction, black-and-white photographs, illustrations, index. $50.)This is a book for booklovers-those having an interest in fine printing andin the makers of fine printing-and for collectors and booksellers. Since themid-196os the work of the Encino Press and of the multitalented Bill Wittliffhas been admired and collected. That should be no wonder since the booksproduced by Wittliff at the Encino Press represent nearly all major Texasauthors-Dobie, Haley, Graves, Larry King, McMurtry, A. C. Greene, Ben K.Green, and others.There are no new Encino Press books to collect since the last book from thepress in 1983, when Bill expanded his creative talent away from the printedpage and into the world of film writing, directing, and producing. The EncinoPress, headquartered at 51o Baylor Street in Austin, still sells from its backlistof books, but the Wittliff collector must now turn to movie and video scriptsand posters to keep abreast.John Graves, who has known Wittliff since his early days in Austin, has writ-ten the introduction to give us an insight into Bill's career from the beginningof the Encino Press in 1965 until the present. The bibliography itself is dividedinto Books and Pamphlets (item 1-161), Selected Ephemera (162- 259), Maga-zine Articles by, about, or illustrated by Wittliff (260-300), and Motion Pic-tures and Television Productions (301o-308). The first 259 items were eitherproduced under the Encino Press imprint or were designed by Wittliff forothers.The bibliography begins with Bill's first design project, The Free World andFree Trade by Harry S. Truman published by SMU Press in 1963, and ends withBill's television adaptation of Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove in 1989. Item